The closure of lanes of traffic on highways for the purposes of highway maintenance and construction is initiated by the placement of panels on the highway to provide an indication to the oncoming traffic that the lane is being closed to traffic. The placement of highway markers in some locations of the country is accomplished by the placement of traffic cones or plastic barrels. In other areas of the country, lane closure is initiated by the placement of highway panels formed with a heavy resilient base member and a removable upright reflective panel that fits into the base. These highways panels have advantages over cones and barrels in that the heavy resilient base is less likely to be displaced positionally from wind, including the air movement associated with moving vehicles, and the reflective panels do not typically become projectiles when struck by a moving vehicle.
The highway panels are manufactured with a heavy resilient base that typically weighs approximately forty pounds and presents an elongated generally rectangular support member for mounting the reflective panel member. The base member has a low profile above the surface of the highway to be less subjective to wind forces and is provided with a central receiver into which the reflective panel is seated when the highway panels are assembled for placement on the highway. Placement of the highway panels is typically accomplished manually from a truck carrying a supply of the highway panel components, i.e. the base member and the reflective panel.
Once assembled, the highway panels are placed onto the highway by manual operations involving workers positioned on the truck and on a work basket typically carried at the rear of the truck. The highway panels are positioned by hand along the lane to be closed to traffic by the workers placing the panels onto the surface of the highway. The weight of the base member becomes a limiting factor in the speed at which these highway panels can be displayed. Furthermore, the weight of the base member results in fatigue in the workers which are required to handle the heavy highway panels.
Retrieving the highway markers is typically accomplished by a worker tipping the highway panel by grasping the top of the reflective panel member to raise one end of the connected base member, whereupon the worker will then grasp the base member and lift the highway panel from the surface of the road onto the truck, although multiple workers might be utilized to lift the highway panels from the surface of the highway onto the elevated surface of the truck bed. Again, the weight of the base member, which is important in the stability of the highway panel during use in diverting traffic from the closed lane, becomes a liability in the retrieval of the highway panels by causing fatigue for the workers deployed to retrieve the highway signs and place the highway signs onto the truck.
Mechanisms have been developed for the placement and retrieval of cone markers, as can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,213,464, granted on May 25, 1993, to John Nicholson, et al, in which a rotating wheel mechanism engages the cone markers guided into the wheel mechanism by a guide member, engages the base of cone marker to invert the cone for engagement with stripper bars that remove the inverted cone marker from the elevating wheel mechanism for placement of the cone marker where the cone marker can be grasped and placed onto the truck bed. The Nicholson wheel mechanism can also be utilized to deploy the cone markers by a worker dropping the cone markers in a specified orientation into a guide device into engagement with the wheel mechanism that orients the cone markers into an upright orientation on the surface of the highway.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,498, granted to Steven Velinsky, et al, on May 2, 2000, provides substantially the same function as the Nicholson mechanism through the engagement of the cone marker by a guide mechanism to bring the cone marker into engagement with a lift arm that grasps the cone marker an pivotally elevates the cone marker to the level of the truck bed where the cone marker is stored manually. U.S. Pat. No. 7,306,398, issued to John Doran, Jr. on Dec. 11, 2007, discloses a more complicated arrangement for transferring cone markers from a truck onto the road surface through utilization of a placement arm.
It would be desirable to provide a mechanized apparatus for placement and retrieval of the highway panels between a truck and the surface of the highway to minimize fatigue in the workers handling the highway panels.